Best Buy Launches Music Cloud Service

Best Buy is entering the increasingly crowded online music locker market with the introduction of Best Buy Music Cloud. The service is the latest to allow users to upload their music to the cloud and stream it to any device, and will challenge similar offerings from Amazon, Apple, and Google. Best Buy’s Music Cloud is made possible by Play Anywhere and features applications for Mac, PC, Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry. A $4 per month premium subscription is available as well as a free package with slightly more limited capabilities.

I know!! I was gonna ask who doesnt have a cloud music service? I used to go to Best Buy to here samples of tracks years ago to see if I wanted the album. Dont anymore. I can hear the whole song on Youtube.

No_Nickname90

Why keep that many copy’s on your devices? I mean, Google Music let’s you stream to the cloud, and you can download the songs you want to keep, so that you don’t have useless space on your phone. LoL!!

Hmm…

Chimphappyhour

Because sometimes the internet doesn’t work so well and some places it doesn’t work at all. If my musical mood changes when I’m caught w/o a connection (oh, let’s say spending a few hours in flight), I’d be SOL if I didn’t like what I had pinned from the cloud. With a local copy, that’s a non-issue. I go a lot of places where NO ONE has a connection.

Oh! And empty space is useless space. Space taken up with local copies of, well, anything, is used space and is only useless if you never use those items. To which I would have to ask, why do you have it if you never use it? My local copies of my music, I use.

No_Nickname90

Hmm… You sound like someone who travels a lot, so I guess cloud servers wouldn’t benefit you that much.

For the space thing, since I don’t have 2GB of music hogging space on my phone compared to the 100MB of pinned music. That leaves space for something else. I thought that be obvious, though. LoL!!

Chimphappyhour

Memory is cheap. I’ve got 32GB, more than enough room for anything really.

dc

Thats all well and good,but I’ll be impressed when someone wants to sell me music at a reasonable price. Anything over 50 cents per song is a rip off. I guess its a pirate’s life for me until then. YARRRR!!!!

Travillion

Unless Best Buy can beat Google’s offering of 20,000 free songs, regardless of bitrate or file size, I don’t know why they’d even try. It’s hard to imagine anyone paying for a monthly service where they still have to upload their songs when they can just do it for free via Google.

anon

Not all cloud services are equal. Google (and Amazon) have launched without backing from the record labels, so they’ll likely by facing litigation. And of course Google’s service most likely won’t be free once it’s out of beta.

PlayAnywhere has the backing of all the major record labels, so like Apple’s service, this one won’t be threatened by litigation.

I agree that Google’s is by far the most appealing right now, but the dust hasn’t settled yet.

Blakkmajik3000

Ummm…You are aware that Amazon sells music right? Why in the world would they face legal problems?

Amazon has the advantage in that it can be a cloud player AND store music, whereas Google does not have the rights to sell any music.

Blakkmajik3000

Meant to say that Amazon’s advantage is that it can be a cloud player and SELL music. My bad.

anon

Because the record labels believe these services require licenses and agreements with them (and likely an implementation with copyright protection like DRM) to allow users to stream music from them, and neither Google nor Amazon were willing or able to reach agreements with the labels before their launches.

http://twitter.com/dtg295 Jon

I agree with Amazon on this, why should they have to shell up a licensing fee for a user to pay for their own music to be streamed? Amazon would make less money on every mp3 sold so whats the point of even offering the service if that’s the case? The record labels are living in a fantasy land and I doubt that what they perceive as reality will win in court.

anon

limited data plans = no cloud music service for me (and I suspect the majority of users)

http://twitter.com/lpklemmer Larry Klemmer

Tried out google music, it’s great for when you’re constantly around 4G/Wifi networks… But as soon as I went up north for the weekend and in a constant 1X zone… can’t stream more than a stutter a minute, and makes the service entirely useless when passing through sketchy service areas. I much prefer my good old 32GB SD card….

TheMan876

*face palm*
Why did you even try it in a 1x zone? It’s obviously not going to work. That’s like complainging you couldn’t watch much youtube on a 56k connection.

You realize you can pin things to download them to your 32GB SD card while you have good signal, right?

No_Nickname90

Um… What horrible service you got. I’m data capped at 2G right now with Tmo and everything streams perfectly for me. I was scared that 2G wouldn’t stream fast, but since it’s just music, everything is fine. I don’t know what kind of reception you gettin. LoL!!

Mac JT

Hmm so lets see, will I up’n select Best Buy’s music cloud on my Android or just goto Google Music which is beautifully integrated to my phone service and will last as long as Google has an office. Best Buy is tethering on the verge of collapse and they really expect me to risk moving my stuff to their servers? What , are they havin’ a laugh?

http://twitter.com/dtg295 Jon

I didn’t even realize they had anyone on staff to build a web service let alone the hosting for one. Just seems like the worst choice anyone could make in terms of options.

Zach

As an American, I’m just eagerly awaiting the launch of Spotify. It seems like the best of all worlds, even if they do charge $10-15 per month.

DannyB2

All Your Music, Wherever You Are?

How about this tagline: All Your Music Are Belong To Us!

Pay us to listen to the music you already own.

Guest

According to PC Magazine, the “lite” version only lets you play 30 seconds of your own songs. I don’t have any songs that short.